Coaching Sportsmanship Is a Must

My son Mason won their Championship game yesterday amongst some of the worst documented officiating and poor sportsmanship that most coaches would have benched even their star player for. I'd like to make 3 points:

When officiating a game, DO NOT badger the spectators. One official not only the worst I have have seen but 99% of the crowd in attendance yesterday seemed to agree. Many in the crowd commented and pointed out certain things but during a full 60 timeout, he parked himself right in front of me, perhaps because I was court side, and badgered and tried to belittle me in front of the crowd. Again, the most unprofessional thing I have seen in quite some time and the crowd agreed. Don't get me wrong, I know officiating is a tough gig but with it comes responsibility and it's not like your not gonna catch some grief from the crowd once in awhile but when blatant and obvious things get missed, even the visiting crowd agreed, you get what you deserve. Take it like a man and don't badger the spectators while officiating a game.

A few of the opposing players showed less than class while having their balloons deflated. Even though officiating was clearly on their side our Orangemen played on even after being tackled, drug down by one arm and shoved on several occasions {Not one Technical foul called by the way} to the point one of their ego driven stars fouled out. {He was one who did some blatant shoving and a tackle} So he waved to all the crowd who clapped then blew a kiss to us all while his coach and team cheered him on.

As I was leaving the gym, I heard the coach outside giving his players the "after game speech" and was amazed. He said that sometimes games go your way and sometimes they don't. That part is true. He then followed it up with "you have nothing to be ashamed of today by your performance." WAIT UP COACH!!! Bottom line is you should have told your team that the way they behaved during that second half was atrocious and as "athletes" should be ashamed of themselves. You should have also benched several of them long before they fouled out! What lesson did you just teach those young men? I'll tell ya: You taught them that it's OK to be a jerk and classless when your 'invincible' players were getting their a#$ kicked.

True Champions play through adversity and overcome the odds as difficult as they may be and win or lose with pride and sportsmanship. It does go both ways and as irony would have it my son Mason {who was playing for 2 different teams in this tourney} had literally just got done with one of those games that didn't go our way and they lost with pride and respect.